Feeding update

Isn’t it great that “feeding updates” are now about Konrad, and not about Natalie! Natalie's OT is working on her drinking from an open cup, and Natalie's doing pretty well with it.

I haven’t posted about Konrad learning to eat solid foods in a while. I haven’t posted because I feared someone would come and take my Mommy license away. Oh, that’s right! I don’t HAVE a Mommy license! Well, if I did, someone would take it away, because I have been completely incompetent at teaching Konrad to eat solid foods. Now you know.

Myssie suggested applesauce and Carla suggested apple juice. Konrad is impressed by neither. He wants breastmilk with nothing added, squirted to the back of his mouth by a mammary gland.

Breastmilk served on a spoon is left to drain out of his mouth. Breastmilk mixed with the tiniest amounts of baby cereal results in spitting.

I have been working with him at least once a day for the past two weeks. This week I decided, “Cindy, you’ve seen feeding therapy sessions many more times than most mothers on the planet. You should be able to do this!” So I decided to think like an SLP (a Speech Language Pathologist, who was Natalie’s feeding therapist). Or at least, I thought I was thinking like an SLP…Sarah can tell me when we see her tomorrow if this is what she would have done.

I put the spoon in Konrad’s mouth to let him get a good feel of it. He has no oral aversion to having anything in his mouth as long as it’s not a food item. Then I put the tiniest drop of breastmilk on the spoon. He didn’t like it. But I kept doing it, and also putting some cereal mixed with breastmilk on the spoon, and he’s tolerating it better (meaning he is spitting less), but still not swallowing anything.

I also tried an eye dropper from the infant Tylenol bottle, and squeezed some breastmilk and then cereal into his cheek pocket. There is very, very, very minor success with this.

It’s ironic that the other day our family reviewed the footage on our video camera (trip to beach, etc) and Tom rewound back to the end of June, to the day where Konrad ate everything up without spilling or spitting back anything…like he’d been eating solids for several months. Who took that Konrad away and replaced him with the Konrad who is now crawling on the floor, but refusing to eat anything? That video is on a tape that I don’t have software to download to the internet, so I can’t show you the proof…you’ll just have to take my word for it.

This is video from today of Konrad’s feeding session. Please excuse the feeding technique and the cinematography…I’m doing both at the same time, so both are sub par. Konrad agrees!